so damn tragic

I keep trying to have the talk with my parents, a talk that needs very much to be had. The urge keeps coming on. My mind keeps phrasing things and rephrasing them all of its own volition. But every time I think "I'll do it. I'm going to do it." something comes up, something happens, and I put it off yet again because "now is not the time." It will happen eventually, it will happen soon, but now is not the time.

I am so tired. I am trying so hard to fix my life and move forward and the energy it takes is just ridiculous. I've finally figured out what I want to do with myself between now and the day when I can hopefully actually get somewhere with my writing. I'm even going back to school in January to further that goal, getting my AAS in Baking and Pastry Arts so I can have that experience and knowledge under my belt. I am long since done with taking shit. It is currently impossible for me to survive on what is meant to be my primary source of income, therefore it is time for me to find a new one. Just because I understand why they have to cut hours doesn't mean that I can live with it.

I am so much further along in my transition privately than I am publicly and I hate that fact. I have finally come to the point where I can look in the mirror and see what I feel rather than what I'm told to be but I know that the world and even most people in my life still see me according to social expectation. I am making the transition into the use of male pronouns. My girlfriend uses them, her friends use them, the only other friend I talk to on an almost daily basis does her best to use them. My sister is more likely these days to somewhat awkwardly refer to me as her brother, as my pets' "dad", as my girlfriend's boyfriend. I have an entire group of friends with whom I am completely stealth, though I've grown so close to some of them these days that I regularly contemplate (and inevitably chicken out of) sharing my dark secret. From my point of view, I have never once lied to them but I can't control how they would interpret the admission and that frightens me.

I am That Boy. I am J. I am Patcha. I am Otto. I am. Jsem.

I am tired of being seen as anything else.

Some day I am going to marry this girl that I have been so indescribably lucky as to have found. It will not be today. It will not be tomorrow. It will not be next week, next month or even next year. Because anyone who truly knows me can tell you that, when I set my mind to it, I am as stubborn as the earth in its determination to turn and I will not settle for anything less than what I deserve and lord knows I will not settle in this. I will not settle for stepping out in someone else's shoes to get a piece of paper that the majority of this country and this world refuses to recognize. What's the point? I don't need the paper to know what I feel. I need it to find vindication. That is not vindication I see there. But when my driver's license reads my real name and that little "f" becomes an "m" and people have no choice but to recognize my stupid, little piece of paper wherever they would recognize that same sort of stupid paper which was issued to my parents, when I can be myself without the constant reminders that, in the eyes of the majority, my claim to humanity is invalid, when only the people who knew me before ever have to know the difference? Then, for me, that will be my vindication.

To each his own and this is mine.

Amen

Today's A Softer World strikes so very close to home, though I know my "fake" diary is anything but happy. I have never once lied in my journal. I have, of course, on occasion, taken steps to hide or omit the truth but I feel as if that's no more than most people tend to do on any given day, in the presence of any given company. It's something that I rather dislike about humanity, really, the habit of softening the blow or cutting out the bits that might make someone uncomfortable or might even make you, yourself, uncomfortable as you admit it, no matter how important it might be.

I have never lied in my journal but I have not, for a very long time, told the whole truth. It's been years now since I've given most people anything but the most carefully edited version of everything. Some of my closest friends have gotten the honest answers and gory details when it's come to certain topics but, in reality, even they haven't gotten everything. In the long run, I suppose this stems from a deep-seated feeling of inadequacy that has been with me for a very long time, a feeling which itself stems from the fact that even most of those who have said that they loved me for me actually meant that they conditionally loved me for the me that they saw at that very moment and that they would turn their backs on me the instant that I became more like the me that they knew from the very beginning I felt the most comfortable while being. So why should I share the whole truth and go into every detail when there is absolutely no reason that anyone would ever even possibly care? Keep yourself to yourself, no one else thinks it matters.

Admittedly, this is a part of why I find myself making a bit of a very slow and quiet move over to Dreamwidth. I don't feel like I can be honest on my livejournal anymore because I don't feel like enough people with the ability to read it actually care about what's really going on. There are so many people on my flist who have friended me for fandom purposes - the roleplaying I used to do, the fanfics I used to write, the fanart I used to draw, etc. - none of which I have done any great deal of for some time. Then there are the people who have friended me for the sake of real-life, few of whom ever seem to pay my real-life posts any mind and none of whom I feel I am half as close to as I used to be. How many people in either of those groups would really care to read along and waste the effort on commenting at the end as I prattle on about my personal religion or issues with my gender identification? Possibly more than my habitually insecure ego would lead me to believe but how should I know? Too much of my life has been filled up with painful and otherwise uncomfortable topics for anyone to really want to follow along anymore and I'm not sure I can really blame them. I just wish that not blaming them didn't make me feel like I also had to be so very careful not to step on any toes.

Why this all bothers me so much, I have no idea. I read what other people write in their journals and I rarely see any more raw honesty there than I see in my own. People I know or have at some point in time known very personally make "tell-all" posts to their journals these days that I can see right through because they're so very watered down, made more family friendly, more palatable to the world outside. But I don't say anything to them. There is, after all, a certain level of dishonesty that is not only acceptable but expected in today's society.

Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?

No. Not really. I'll pretend to, though, if that makes you feel any better.

I've never lied in my journal but I always feel like I'm lying. I'm not going to claim that my Dreamwidth is going to hold in candid detail all of the facts that would be like dirty, little secrets coming from me on other blogs - hell, I'm not even going to claim that I'm going to use my Dreamwidth any more if even quite as much as I do any other blog - but I will say that there may come to be a lot of things on my Dreamwidth that you wouldn't find anywhere else. Think of it as my personal atonement. I'm making amends with myself. Because I've spent far too much of my time putting a filter on Me for the sake of avoiding the discomfort of others. I'm making myself a place where I can stop.


- Crossposted from jsem to lyotto